2007-04-13 - 2:49 p.m.
Why do you do that, he asks me. And what he wondering about is my particular way of wearing socks around the house, a habit that I've had with me for so long that I can't remember since when. To be clear, most of the time I wear socks as socks were intended to be worn, but during long periods of sitting still I often wind up with socks bunched up around the arch of my foot leaving my heel and ankle exposed. It just happens. I don't think about it. Nor have I ever thought about why I would do this, but now that I am, I know. I also know that the answer will sound stupid out loud, but it isn't interesting enough to be a secret either.
It feels kind of good.
Shuhei tries it out for himself and agrees. It does feel kind of good to wear your socks in this way.
But all of this, I know, isn't interesting at all. What is interesting, oddly flattering, and, frankly, just a little disturbing, is the fact that my husband is noticing quirks* that I don't.
How I imagine marriages beginning to become sucky** goes basically as such. Over time, individual quirks that were once charming become less charming than predictable, and then less predictable then mildly annoying. Over more time, this sort of attitude is inclined to describe not only the kooky, quirky things being done, but also the person doing them. And soon, poof, without the need for anything to actually go wrong, what you have is a sucky marriage.
And here is where I pause to try to gain a little perspective on all this. Does the above seem reasonable to others wonders ELOFTING@HOTMAIL.COM. (I ought to edit that address soon...) I mean, I can't be sure whether what I've just described is really a potential problem, or simply the fact that I dislike the word "quirk".
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* Harmless digression: While searching for a word that I could use other than "quirk", which annoys me (but doesn't have any obvious synonyms asides from "idiosyncrisy", which I find both annoying and pretentious), I just learned that 24 or 25 pieces of paper of the same size and quality are a quire... Who knew?
** If my taking for granted that marriages are inclined to turn sucky makes you think less of me, I apologize. I can't help it. The generation before me provided so many examples of sucky marriages, and few that weren't that it seems, to me, only natural that this assumption formed, and that I should want to take a proactive approach against sucking.
